Conductor Assessments

[Bennski]

Just got sent some assessments to-do for a conductor position with Northern. The assessments were I felt somewhat unrelated to the role I found. Like working out percentages of company sales for a year using a graph/table. Perhaps this is just me being naive but I felt that the questions were more maths based then I would ever of thought for a conductor role. As I was expecting alot more safety and customer service based questions but got the complete opposite. Is this peculiar or is this just the normal way TOC's assess conductor positions?
As the Trainee Driver assessments are scenario based and situational judgement tests I found the conductor assessments far more complicated than the Driver ones strangely.
Was just wondering if anyone else found the questions difficult and confused as to why these were the type of questions they were wanting to assess people on.

 

[aimmee]

Hi i did the online assessment for Arriva trains wales and that wasnt what i was expecting same as you slot of maths, i thought maybe there similar as both Arriva? i thought afterwards its more of a graduate exam

 

[michael74]

Indeed, I applied for a conductor post for GWR end of last year, did the on-line application then the Enhanced eArcu Customer Service SJT, no online maths test. Applied again more recently and had to take the "IBM - GWR - CAT Numerical Reasoning Test" after the Situational Judgement test. Fortunately there was no time limit and I had to use maths that I have not in nearly 30 years

 

[AMD]

As Northern recruit both externally and internally the assessments need to be fair to both sets of applicants ie using railway scenarios would put external candidates at a disadvantage. And yes it's deliberately tough due to the amount of people applying for the positions.

 

[michael74]

I spoke to GWR HR on another matter and as an aside I asked about this new Maths test and they said it was needed to thin out the applicants a little more.

 

[SomethingRoyal]

When I went through the application and assessment process to be a conductor with my TOC I didn’t complete any math exercise such as the one you’re describing. The closest we came to it was a role play ticket and checking exercise but that was identifying correct parts of a ticket and how much change they would receive from their payment amount.

Perhaps it’s somethong Northern like to do as part of their recruitment? I couldn’t say for sure. However yes your role is always safety critical first and customer service & ticketing comes second. Hope that helps.

 

[Bennski]

Well I went into the assessment expecting to be checking to see if tickets were valid and answering safety critical scenario based questions. Just was a shock that it was a maths test as every other job I have applied for on the railways has always had a situational judgement test or psychometric test. I especially thought this was the case with the conductor role as you are face-to-face with customers and carry out safety critical roles all the time. Perhaps in the later stages of the application there were these sort of tests Im not 100% sure, just wanted to see if this was a new testing method and it seems it is.
Im sure there is a valid reason behind it as a few people have mentioned its probably a way to get the numbers down, but surely there are others ways which relate to the role other than a 17 minute, 18 question maths test based on percentages and ratios for business profits? Plus none of the questions were even remotely related to the railway or the role itself which I found funny...

 

[Super_Hans]

Well I went into the assessment expecting to be checking to see if tickets were valid and answering safety critical scenario based questions. Just was a shock that it was a maths test as every other job I have applied for on the railways has always had a situational judgement test or psychometric test. I especially thought this was the case with the conductor role as you are face-to-face with customers and carry out safety critical roles all the time. Perhaps in the later stages of the application there were these sort of tests Im not 100% sure, just wanted to see if this was a new testing method and it seems it is.
Im sure there is a valid reason behind it as a few people have mentioned its probably a way to get the numbers down, but surely there are others ways which relate to the role other than a 17 minute, 18 question maths test based on percentages and ratios for business profits? Plus none of the questions were even remotely related to the railway or the role itself which I found funny...

I feel your pain, I wasn't expecting it at all (I did the same tests last week) My brain was fried but it did offer a practice tests first which was really helpful